


Reclusive Tendencies

by Assayist



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Gen, Hurt Peter Parker, Hurt/Comfort, Irondad, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker Whump, Protective Tony Stark, Spiders, Whump, and the letter ow, author is not a medical professional, read that last one again :), tachycardia, this story is brought to you by obscure medical emergencies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:20:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29973798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Assayist/pseuds/Assayist
Summary: Peter’s second spider bite goes just about as well as his first.akaPeter learns the no-pet rule at Avenger’s Tower.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 39
Kudos: 176
Collections: 2021 Irondad Sprint Event





	1. A Cluster of Spiders

“There’s a spider in your hair, kid.”

Peter was panting too hard to respond to Mr. Stark’s lame joke, having just run a quarter mile, up two flights of stairs, and then skidded into the the Avenger’s training room twenty minutes late for training. He did spare the effort for an exaggerated eye roll for Mr. Stark’s benefit as he dropped his backpack to the floor.

Clint was across the room giving Steve some archery lessons, and Nat and Sam were sparring in the ring. Mr. Stark had apparently chosen to wait by the door with a Starkpad for Peter to show up just to tease him.

He used the Starkpad to mime swiping something off the top of Peter’s head, fully committed to the spider joke.

“So, did you forget we had training today,” Mr. Stark said, “or did you lose track of time making out with your girlfriend?”

“I do not have a girlfriend,” Peter protested for the dozenth time since MJ had posted that picture of them studying together on Instagram. “Queens needed me.”

“It always does.” Peter narrowed his eyes, but Mr. Stark seemed to be speaking in all seriousness this time. Good.

“Really, I was on my way to the tower when I saw a drug deal going down. I caught six guys who’d been using a trucking company to smuggle drugs in from Texas. Six guys!”

His mentor’s smile was big and honest. “I’m sure Queens would send its thanks if they had any idea who you were.” The smile faded and he craned his neck to look at a spot on the top of Peter’s head before frowning. “Although I’m about to bust you for smuggling spiders. You know we have a strict no pet policy here, right? Regardless of your branding?”

“Your Spider-Man jokes are getting stale,” Peter said, pressing his hair down self0consciously. He’d pulled the suit off in a hurry in an alleyway, so he could use the public entrance to the tower without causing a stir, so his hair was probably crazy.

“Not a joke. The first one had a friend. Seriously, are you breeding them up there?”

“No, and I—”

But Peter never got to say how lame it was to keep after the spider jokes because a thin-legged, pale, honest-to-god spider rappelled down from a forward tuft of Peter’s hair, pausing an inch in front of Peter’s face, spinning and moving closer with the air current when Peter inhaled in surprise.

Then shrieked.

He jerked back, swatting the spider away before it could climb down his throat or something. He fell into a partial defensive crouch a few feet back before realizing his overreaction and standing up, but it was too late. His yell had caught the attention of the other four Avengers, who were all jogging towards them. Great. So much for slipping into training without making a scene.

Steve voiced the question clear on everyone’s faces as he caught up to them, still holding a bow and arrow awkwardly.

“What’s going on?”

“Peter saw a spider,” Tony supplied.

Peter’s glare only made Tony’s grin wider.

“No! I almost ate a spider!”

“What?”

“Why?”

Steve looked confused, but Clint standing next to him looked mischievous.

“I didn’t _want_ to. It swung right down in front of my face.”

“Now you know how the bad guys feel when you come swooping in,” Tony ribbed. “It’s karma.”

“Seriously?” Sam added incredulously. “Spider-Man’s afraid of spiders?”

Peter couldn’t let that comment stand. Not when the high-pitched echoes of his shriek were still sounding in his memory.

“Oh, like you’d be any less scared of a falcon two inches from your face.”

“Yeah, ‘cause a falcon’s got claws.”

“Spiders have fangs!”

“To be fair,” Nat broke in, “Most spiders aren’t dangerous to humans. They're relatively harmless.”

She was right, of course. Peter had studied a lot about spiders after the bite.

She raised an eyebrow. "But that doesn't explain why you're carrying a pair around with you."

“There was a nest of spiders on the drugs bust. A few must have tagged along. Not a big deal.”

“Do spiders live in nests?”

“I say a hive,” Clint said, nodding seriously.

“Call it whatever you want. There were, like, fifty of them in this nasty giant webbed-up corner of a truck that I accidentally stuck my hand into.”

“Once again, now you know how the bad guys feel,” Sam said.

“Look, the spiders are gone now, so can we just get to training?” Peter asked, eager to put this memory behind everyone.

“We’ve _been_ training, kid,” Sam said, turning around to head back to the ring and finishing his sentence over his retreating shoulder. “You’re the one who’s showing up late with a posse of spiders.”

“A gaggle of spiders?” Nat wondered aloud as she followed him.

“It’s a cluster of spiders,” Peter called out, but they ignored him.

Steve handed Clint back his bow. “Meet me in the sparring ring once you’ve changed, Peter. Then you can hit the obstacle course afterward.”

Peter nodded, then headed to his room down the hall to change. He didn’t see any more spiders, but he didn’t stop to check either, aware of Steve waiting for him in the gym.

Two hours later, Peter landed after his last run of the ceiling’s upper obstacle course, well and truly winded. He leaned over, hands on his knees, sucking in air like a bellows. Sweat dripped uncomfortably down the center of his back, tickling between his shoulders.

His upper back and shoulders were sore from all the swinging, sorer than they’d been in a long time. And he hadn’t even done weights with Mr. Stark today. He rubbed at them roughly as he walked over to where the other had started collecting near the exit to hear Steve’s “Good job, team!” speech he gave after every group training session.

Peter pulled off his mask, still breathing hard.

“You all right there, Peter?” Steve asked.

“Yeah, just…extra tired. Tough training.”

“Tough all around,” Steve agreed. “Good work, everyone. Hit the showers, then meet in the kitchen if you want. I’m making spaghetti for anyone who wants some.”

They dispersed, heading down the hallway to their own rooms.

Peter wasted no time heading to his room to change and shower, but once he closed the door behind him, he sat on the bed for a minute, still feeling pathetically winded. Maybe sitting for a minute would give him the energy to shower.

It didn’t work. In fact, he was feeling more tired than ever, and his shoulders were even sorer if that were possible. He was a little dizzy too, so he must be hungrier than he thought. He’d grab a protein bar from the nightstand, take a super fast shower, then count on Steve’s spaghetti to get him back to baseline.

The protein bar didn’t really help, but Peter stepped into the bathroom and loosened the spider suit to finish the plan. He peeled his arms out of the sweaty material and froze when he saw his reflection in the mirror.

A dark, bruise-colored circle the size of his palm painted the left side of his neck.

Another crept over his right shoulder. Right on a spot he felt was particularly sore.

A sick feeling dripped into his stomach as he rolled his shoulders, feeling every sore spot anew, and he turned, craning his neck to see his back reflected in the mirror.

Three, four, _five_ more of the bruise-looking things coated his upper shoulders, a few of them overlapping each other like crooked venn diagrams.

Training had never done _that_ to him before. He tied the spider-suit arms around his waist like a jacket as he moved back to the bedroom, all thoughts of showering before he figure out what was going on evaporated.

Was he breathing faster now because he was panicking or was it something else?

He bent over to grab the t-shirt he’d dropped on the floor earlier in his hurry to change, planning to throw it on and immediately go ask Tony for some advice.

But when he stood up, the room swirled and darkened around him, the way it sometimes did when he stood up too fast first thing in the morning.

He put a steadying hand on the wall and waited for it to clear.

And waited.

And realized too late that he’d waited too long for something that was never going to come.

He felt his face hit the carpet, vaguely aware of Friday’s voice in the distance, but the roaring in his ears drowned out the words, then the world.


	2. A Cluster of F*@#s

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony finds out something's wrong with Peter and the team comes together to try and save him.

Tony sat at the high counter in the kitchen as Steve stood in front of the stove, cracking spaghetti rods in half before dumping them in the boiling water.

“Italians everywhere are weeping right now,” Tony commented wryly. “If you wanted short pasta, you should have made macaroni.”

“And what if I want medium pasta?”

Steve cracked an entire bag of spaghetti in one solid jerk and Tony dodged a piece of pasta debris that shot across the room. “Lasagna maybe? Penne? Anything but this sacrilege.”

“It fits better this way.”

“Not around a fork it doesn’t.”

F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s urgent voice cut off the conversation.

“Sir, Peter Parker requires a medical check. He’s lost consciousness in his bedroom and isn’t responding to my questions.”

Tony’s heart rate shot from resting to battle ready in two heartbeats. Steve threw his handfuls of spaghetti on the counter as Tony leapt up, letting his stool clatter to the ground behind him. Then he was off down the hallway toward Peter’s room, Steve right on his heels.

His brain flitted through what he knew about the situation so far. The kid had looked exhausted after training, but not dangerously so. Maybe it was a blood sugar thing? Maybe he’d taken a bad hit during sparring, but surely Steve would have said something.

Tony threw open the door to Peter’s room so hard Steve had to catch it again when it rebounded off the wall. Tony hadn’t even registered the need, too consumed with concern for the kid lying on the ground in front of him.

Peter lay next to his bed, his face pressed into the carpet. His spider suit was tied around his waist, leaving the mottled purple of his upper back on full display.

Definitely not a blood sugar thing. Or a simple bad hit while sparring. Not that that either of those realizations brought Tony any closer to knowing what on earth was going on.

He dropped to his knees, grabbing Peter’s upper arm where the bruised markings didn’t reach. He shook him gently.

“Kid?”

No response. The kid was obviously still breathing, although his rapid panting—as fast as it had been fresh off of training—was unsettling.

“What are those marks?” Steve asked as he knelt next to him. “Bruises?”

“You were the one training him. You tell me.”

Tony’s hand hovered over the painful looking marks, baffled.

“Nothing happened that would explain that.”

The marks didn’t look exactly like bruises anyway. Too uniformly circular. And oddly swollen. That and the faint ring of red that limned each of them spoke to a possible infection.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y., call a med team. Steve, let’s roll him over. Might make it easier for him to breathe.”

Peter was disconcertingly pliant when they rolled him over. The new position didn’t slow Peter’s breathing at all, but it did reveal another circular, purple mark that covered one whole side of Peter’s neck. Tony pressed two fingers to the other side. The racing pulse there was barely reassuring.

“His pulse is really fast,” he murmured to Steve, watching the quick contractions of Peter’s chest as he gasped.

“Isn’t it always?”

“Not like this.”

He patted Peter’s cheek gently, but there was still no response. Pulling one of his eyelids back revealed a normal pupil that contracted when the light of the room hit it, but the so-called “whites of his eyes” were tinged yellow.

“I don’t get it,” Steve said. “Why didn’t he say anything during training?”

Because he’s still a kid trying to prove himself, Tony thought. Because we were too busy teasing him about spiders to listen. Or because whatever this was had happened after training, which meant the security of the whole tower might be compromised.

So many possibilities, and none of them good.

Clint came barreling into the room.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y. said something was wrong. What happened? Was he attacked?”

“Unlikely,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. supplied. “No one has entered the room or building who was not authorized.”

But Tony was too busy turning over one of his earlier thoughts. They’d been too busy teasing the kid…

“Spiders,” he whispered.

“What?” Steve and Clint asked in unison.

“Spider bites,” Tony said, feeling more sure of his theory with every syllable. “The ones from the training room might have bitten him. Or there were more that no one noticed. Someone track one down and bring it to the med bay so we can identify it.”

“I’m on it,” Clint said, and he darted away, weaving around two nurses who were entering the room with a stretcher. Their air of competent urgency, but not sheer panic, took control of the room.

They hoisted the still-gasping kid onto a gurney and wheeled him down the hall, lobbing questions at Tony over their shoulders. The urgency of the situation blurred time, and it seemed like mere seconds later that Tony found himself sitting in the waiting room outside the med bay doors, alone.

Clint was presumably still spider hunting in the training room. Sam had appeared and offered to do the same in Peter’s bathroom. Natasha had been close on Sam’s heels and then gone to pick up May and bring her to the Tower. Steve had hung around awkwardly for a few minutes then said something about a hot meal lifting spirits and disappeared back to the kitchen to finish the spaghetti.

Not that Tony was going to be able to eat any of it, if the churning pit in his stomach had anything to say about it.

It was a familiar pit, since Tony had logged more hours than he cared to recall in a waiting room after one of Peter’s vigilante escapades.

But this felt different. This wasn’t life-and-death waiting. Things weren’t that bad quite yet.

But they were worse in a different way. Worse because there was no bad guy to blame or pursue or arrest. Worse because this had happened right under everyone’s noses without anyone really noticing. Worse because this had happened at home.

Tony lost track of time hemming and hawing about whether he’d be more useful here waiting for a doctor to come out or more useful helping Clint and Sam track down those spiders. The scent of spaghetti was just starting to waft down the hall when the med bay doors swung open and a doctor with a clipboard stepped out.

Tony was on his feet immediately.

“He’s relatively stable for now,” the doctor said, answering Tony’s unasked question.

“Stable. Stable’s good, right?” Tony asked, walking up to her.

She didn’t need to reference her clipboard to give Tony her report. “For now. We’ve cleaned and bandaged the sites of the probable bites and taken a blood sample to run some tests on. We’ve given him oxygen and a basic IV until results come back.”

“And how long will that be?”

“I’d guess half an hour, but it’s hard to say exactly.”

Tony ran a hand through his hair and glanced back to the lobby chairs. May might be here by then, depending on traffic in the city.

“You can go in and sit with him if you want. He’s awake.”

Awake was definitely a good sign, one that Tony wanted to verify personally. And awake likely meant the kid would welcome the distraction of company until they sorted things out.

“Yeah, okay.”

She led Tony down a hallway. “There’s a button in his room for emergencies, but we’re also monitoring him. Let us know if anything changes. Or if you find that spider.”

She opened a door and held it open as Tony walked through, eager to see the kid looking better.

Peter was stretched out on a flat hospital bed, slightly yellowed eyes trained on Tony, still breathing too fast and shallow even with an oxygen mask strapped to his face. An IV stood at the head of the bed, trailing a tube into his arm, and a pulse oximeter and blood pressure cuff fed readings onto a screen above the bed.

“Hey,” Peter managed when Tony approached. He sounded exhausted. Still out of breath even though he was lying down. Damp hair stuck to his forehead, where a layer of sweat gleamed in the bright medical lights.

“Hey yourself,” Tony said, not mentioning the dozen tells that the kid was feeling pretty miserable. But he couldn’t keep his eyes away from the swathes of bandages on Peter’s neck, shoulders, and chest. The clean white of the gauze contrasted starkly against the empurpled skin barely visible at the edges of them. The spots had grown. One of them reached all the way up to Peter’s cheek now.

Tony cast about for a topic of idle chatter. Something to take the kid’s mind off the current situation.

“I think the spaghetti’s almost done now.”

“Think the doc will…make an exception?” Of course. It was med bay policy that all food be approved by the doctors first. They weren’t going to let him eat until they knew what was wrong. Just in case surgery was required. Which was something Tony didn’t want to think about. He sat down on a chair next to the bed, rapping his fingers on the plastic railing impatiently.

“I’ll talk to her, but I bet you’ll be out of here in plenty of time to have your usual three servings.”

As if to prove him wrong, the oxygen reading on the screen above Peter ticked down a number.

“Doubt it,” Peter muttered around the oxygen mask. “Have him save me some though.” He winced, rolling one of his shoulders back and forth.

The oxygen reading ticked down again.

“Need me to get the doctor?”

Peter was familiar with the subtext of _Need more pain meds?_

“They asked if I could wait…until they know more.” Peter must have seen the disapproving look on Tony’s face, but what was probably meant to be an impassioned argument in response sounded more like Peter was trying to convince himself. “Half an hour’s not so bad.” A few breaths. “It’s not so bad. I told them I’d wait.”

The oxygen levels ticked up a number. Then down. Then down again.

Peter closed his eyes, pulling in deep breaths through the mask. He’d been breathing hard when he’d come running in the door late for training and while he was sparring with Steve and when he’d come down from the obstacle course. When was the last time he’d had a decent breath? And why had he decided it wasn’t worth worrying about?

“Why didn’t you tell someone, Pete?”

Peter’s lax face gave no indication he’d heard the question.

The oxygen reading ticked down again.

The door cracked open and Clint came in, holding a coffee cup with a paper towel pressed over the opening.

“I found two spiders in a corner of the training room. Where should I take them?”

“If you’ll bring them to the medical scanner in the corner, I’ll work at identifying them,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. said quietly. It took her less than a minute to provide an identification. “Both spiders appear to be of the species _Loxosceles reclusa_ , more commonly known as the brown recluse. They are particularly well-known for their necrotic venom.”

That was not what Tony wanted to hear.

“Tell the doctor,” he told F.R.I.D.A.Y. as he dropped his head into his hands and squeezed his eyes shut. Necrotic venom meant dead tissue, and if that’s what all that purple skin was, if it was dying, if the kid was dying…

“This is why we’ve got rules about pets here, Pete,” he muttered.

Clint dropped his hand onto Tony’s shoulder, squeezing in silent sympathy. He set the spiders—now in a lidded jar—on the side table by the bed, where Tony watched their odd combination of perfect stillness, then frantic scrabbling at the smooth glass walls. He understood both instincts, frozen as he was in the chair by Peter’s bed but desperate to jump up and find something useful to do.

He turned back to Peter, wondering how much longer it would be until whatever tests the doctors were running came back. How bad would things be?

Five minutes later the doctor pushed back into the room with a cart full of gear and a smile that raised Tony’s spirits more than he would have thought possible.

“We’ve called his aunt,” she said, “and we’re starting a transfusion of packed red blood cells to help with the hemolytic anemia he got from the bites. None of the wounds look necrotic yet, so there’s a good chance this is all the help he’ll need before his healing takes care of the rest.”

She hung a bag of blood from the IV pole, started the transfusion, and left with a promise she’d be back soon to check on things. Clint clapped Tony’s shoulder with a “Good news, man,” and followed her out.

The nauseating pit in Tony’s stomach calmed with every drip of the transfusion and every uptick of the oxygen monitor.

Peter started to stir when the bag was still three-quarters full, already sounding a little less like he was trying to run a marathon while lying down.

“Am I better?” he asked the room, still looking asleep.

Tony smiled. “Getting there.”

Peter’s eyes were still tinged yellow when he opened them, trying to blink away the tiredness. “They find out what was wrong?”

“Hemolytic anemia,” Tony said, still not one hundred percent certain what that even meant. “Thanks to our friend the brown recluse spider. We think you avoided the skin necrosis bit though.”

That woke the kid up a little, but in typical Peter fashion, he narrowed his eyebrows and narrowed in on the least important implication in that statement.

“Those spiders aren’t native to New York.”

“Neither are the smugglers from Texas you apprehended,” Tony said, wondering if Peter’s avoidance of the topic of nearly dying or his own obsession with it was the unhealthy take. “They probably didn’t realize they were moving more than just drugs.”

He grabbed the jar of spiders and brought it over to Peter, who reached for the jar, but quickly aborted the movement with a pained look.

“Shoulders hurt.”

Tony held them over his head instead, so he could watch their frantic movements as he gently tilted the jar back and forth.

“Just the two?”

“That we’ve found so far,” Tony said. “But you’ve got seven bites. Probably from that many spiders based on the amount of irritation surrounding each bite.” Tony put the jar back on the table and couldn’t hold the question in any longer. “Why didn’t you tell anyone, kid? You can’t just train like nothing’s wrong when—”

“I didn’t know anything was wrong!” Peter interrupted. “I thought I was just extra tired and sore. I didn’t even see any of the bites until after training.”

Tony stared for a moment, sizing up the kid’s story. It fit pretty well, especially since he’d grown out of his hiding injuries phase in recent months.

“Your story,” Tony said slowly, “is that you didn’t notice getting bit by no less than seven spiders with necrotic venom?”

Peter nodded, then froze, looking up at the ceiling like he was recalling something. “Actually, I felt one or two weird pinches after the fight with the smugglers, but they went away so fast that I didn’t think they were anything.”

“Not even the spider hive you said you put your fist through?”

“Mr. Stark. I would have _told_ you,” Peter said with such sincerity that Tony was convinced. “I’ve only been bitten by one spider before today, and that was sort of unmistakable. I thought all spider bites would be like that.”

“You thought all spider bites would give you superpowers?”

“I _thought_ I wouldn’t be able to ignore it if I got bit. The first bite hurt worse than these ones did.”

“And yet this is the one that landed you in the medbay.”

“The first one did too. Well, the hospital. I was out for, like, four days.”

Tony didn’t know what to say to that. He’d never actually asked the kid about the bite that gave him his powers. Never thought about it being painful or dangerous.

“Geez, kid. I had no idea.”

“Might have been hemo-whatever anemia then too. They never really figured it out. I just…got better.”

That was lucky then. Maybe he could get those hospital records. Might be something useful for treating the kid in the future in there.

“Well, go on and get better from this one too. In the meantime,” he shook the spider jar, ”I’m going to go donate these to a local museum or something. They’ve outstayed their welcome.”

“They’re kind of cute, though.”

“No.”

“Cute for spiders, I mean.”

“No.”

“Really, I’ve seen a lot of spiders, and these are at least a 7 out of 10.”

“No.”

They weren’t the most grotesque spiders Tony had even seen—he might even call them elegant if they hadn’t almost killed his protege—but he knew where Peter was inevitably going to take this conversation.

“I’m pretty sure they’re not usually aggressive unless disturbed,” Peter said, sounding like a documentary.

“Agree to disagree. And still no.”

“How can you agree to disagree and still be arguing no?”

“I will forever disagree with whatever spider sexiness scale you have going on there,” Tony clarified. “And no, we are not keeping them as pets. I know that’s where you’re going with this.”

“But they’re _classy_ pets, Mr. Stark. They’ve got a little violin shape on their backs.”

Tony peered closer at the spiders to see that the kid was right. Two little dark violins graced the nearly hairless backs of the spiders. The kid really did know his spider facts. Which raised a new question.

“And where were these observational skills when you were apparently being swarmed by the things?”

“Obviously I was too busy dodging the bullets to worry about the spiders.”

“Come again?”

It was just one heart attack after another with this kid.

“Uhhh, I mean busy. I was busy. With lots of things. Not just bullets. And distracted. More busy than distracted though because everyone knows distracted superheroing is dangerous.”

“Every word you say gives me a new gray hair, kid, you know that?”

“It was also dark in the truck where the spiders were, so I couldn’t see them super well. Let’s blame it on that instead of…the other things being super distracting and very close and really loud.”

They stared at each other wordlessly, neither of them really wanting to have the “safe superheroing” lecture that comments like that begged for. Peter broke eye contact when he yawned, and Tony decided it could wait for another day.

“You get some shut-eye while I find Violin 1 and Violin 2 a new home.”

“Aww, you’ve named them,” Peter nearly cooed. “Now we have to keep them.”

The door to the room burst open with a clatter, and Tony almost dropped the jar of spiders. Sam skidded into the room holding up a clear drinking glass like a trophy, one of Peter’s textbooks covering the opening.

“I found two of them in Peter’s bathroom! I think they might be recluses!”

Tony’s mouth dropped open. Had Clint not told Sam they’d found the spiders? Had he been frantically searching this whole time? Who had to apologize here, because Tony was thinking this was definitely Clint. Who—conveniently for him—wasn’t here. 

Sam’s look of confusion only deepened at Peter’s knee-jerk response.

“Look, they can be a string quartet now!”

Tony snorted, and Sam frowned.

“Did I miss something?” he asked, lowering the glass of spiders slowly. “Because, no offense, but I sort of imagined a more triumphant end to the life-and-death, save-the-kid spider hunt I’ve been on.”

“Clint brought his in half an hour ago.”

Sam sputtered. “And y’all just left me looking?”

“It’s for a good cause,” Tony spun. “Even after we identified the species, we couldn’t very well have venomous spiders roaming the tower.”

“What, so I’m pest control now?”

“If the wings fit.”

Sam bristled so obviously at that comment that Tony had to stifle a laugh. Normally Sam would have shot a comment right back, but he was apparently holding back in the name of the sick kid his eyes flicked to.

“Well, they don’t.” He punctuated the last word by banging the spider glass down on the counter firmly, then marched to the door with a final glare at Tony and a “Glad you’re feeling better, kid,” to Peter.

Peter’s eyes flickered between the two spider containers in the room.

“Soooo, now that there’s four—”

“No. Still no, kid.”

“Worth a shot,” Peter said, then yawned again.

Tony’s phone buzzed with a text from Natasha, who was driving May over from her work. _Two minutes out_. Time to wrap things up here then and let the professional take over.

He pocketed his phone and flipped off the main lights, letting the dim yellow emergency lighting of the medbay flood the room.

“May will be up soon, kid.”

Peter looked tired enough that he might not even last two minutes. But then again, super healing did usually take it out of the kid.

“You think I got any new powers this time?” he muttered as his eyes slipped closed.

“Let’s hope not,” Tony said. “Your aunt and I have enough to worry about without you acquiring night vision or the ability to fly or something.”

Peter nestled his head into the pillow behind him.

“Maybe I can play the violin now.”

“We’ll test it later, kid.”

“And there’d be less for you guys to worry about if I could fly because then I couldn’t fall,” he said with a sleepy exhale.

Tony smiled, the kid’s signature brand of unadulterated innocence and heart somehow still catching him off guard. The kid really did bring out the best in him. He gave into it alone in the room, saying the first response that came to his mind.

“Yeah, but then we’d both worry about how high you’d go.”

Peter didn’t respond, leaving Tony wondering just how fast it was humanly possible to fall asleep. He waited for a few breaths, letting Peter’s slow, unlabored inhales sand the last raw edges of his anxiety away.

Then he grabbed the second pair of spiders—Viola and Cello, obviously—and headed downstairs to meet Natasha and May and tell them the kid was going to be just fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed my first short fic and my first attempt at some real comforty stuff at the end of a story. I'm practicing for my other story, "Forging Ahead," because I have a tendency to skip over all the mushy-gushy stuff and I'm told that's not as satisfying for readers. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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